Contemporary Australian fiction, like Australian film, is known more for its exuberance and antic energy than its reticence and restraint. Deborah Robertson’s Careless, a first novel that has already won her acclaim in her own country, is a marvellous correction to the stereotype.
Robertson’s ingredients are simple, but disparate: right to the end, one is not quite sure how they are going to combine. This uncertainty gives the novel an intricate atmosphere of floating suspense.
In a moment of murderous rage and insanity, a man drives his truck into a children’s playgroup. Among those killed is the young son of Lily, a neglectful single mother. His older sister, Pearl, survives, and much of the novel is concerned with how Pearl comes to terms with what has happened.
Another character, a louche contemporary artist called Adam, gets involved when a civic body, spurred by the inevitable public outpouring of emotion, decides to erect a memorial to the children, and to victimised children in general. Adam wants the commission. A rampant narcissist, his taste for sensation is mixed up with deeper, itchier yearnings that make him the novel’s most interesting character. As a child he learned, in the author’s words, ‘to cultivate a small, cold place in his heart in order to experience something that interested him’.
He starts an affair with Lily. One day, rummaging around under her bed, he discovers her little boy’s ashes, which gives him an idea for his memorial. The idea is repulsive, naturally; but in an era that has seen sculptors gain notoriety by making sculpture out of their own frozen blood, it is far from implausible.
Finally, there is Sonia, the elderly widow of a Danish designer, still mourning her husband in a dusky, pensive way.
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